by Jalapenotrellis » Thursday May 12th, 2022 1:56pm
Orc Shaman (quest 4): If you arrange the room such that he can't be immediately killed when they open the door, I got off all 6 of his spells this time plus a few melee attacks. The heroes chose to fight outside of the room here as well, which really put the ball in my court. They were separated 3 ways. This was my most successful wizard. The teleport trap almost ensures that they fight outside the room or be man down, which really bumps this wizard up in survivability for the quest.
The Final Conflict (quest 5): Unlocked all the rooms while starting to blockade the players into the center and rooms to the left. Got the Storm Master and Necromancer to come in from the right of the bottom via the secret passage room. High Mage and Orc Shaman came in from the left (room with the table). The Orc Shaman and Necromancer are your "tank" wizards; the Storm Master and High Mage are your "DPS/attack" wizards; so just like you would pair the Barbarian and Wizard or Elf and pair the Dwarf with the other spell caster, that strategy works really well with these wizards. The players prepared Wall of Stone, and it blocked the two chaos warriors for about 5 turns (using the block on white shields only, 2 body point rule change, which makes walls work excellently).
The pit traps were crazy in this quest and helped the evil wizards significantly, as did the Earthquake spell used from outside the room into the room into the table on the left (literally pidgeoned them in a pit with enemies on both sides almost endlessly, giving them disadvantage/dice down for a while). This got rid of a lot of their potions and scrolls. Add to that, the Storm Master and High Mage both got off Thieving Wind and the Rust spell, which got rid of one of the two shields on the barbarian (randomly, I had them assign a number to each of their weapons and armor and roll dice to see which would be discarded) and his chain mail (Rust targeted this specifically). This was pretty brutal.
Used 21 of 24 evil wizard spells in the final quest, depleted considerable amount of the heroes' resources, and finally got them to use the ring of return too at the end to get out because they were out of resources and didn't want to use anymore. They chose not to get to the center room and search it. The quest was really long too. I think we finished at 4.5 hours for this one with 3 people including me. This quest is what makes the quest pack. I'd call it the hardest quest since Festral (which, honestly, I don't think was meant to be defeated but run from, as evidenced by the lore at the beginning of this quest pack).
Orc Shaman died first when trying to buff the orcs in the second room to the left. He got off 3 of his spells, not the summon spells (there were so many figures already on the board).
Storm Master got lightning bolt off diagonally on 2 of the heroes. Necromancer came in the room with the table and blocked them from leaving the left side of the room while stabbing with his 5 attack dice. The Storm Master also used Blinding Sleet to make them all lose a turn. Then came around and Earthquake tiled them behind the table. That move was the most brutal thing I could have done to them because they were stuck and at disadvantage behind endless monsters.
At the end, I used the High Mage's Escape spell to regroup him in the room with the Fireburst trap next to the Necromancer and High Mage (he was still in the room with the table at the right.
I got the heroes to exit into the rooms with the falling blocks and then the Fireburst token, which was cool because it did damage to both 3 evil wizards and 2 heroes. Since the evil wizards were out of spells, I wanted to make use of the Fireburst trap. Well, the heroes just kept rolling poorly and the wizards hit like trucks in melee.
Also, I modified the quest to have the chaos warriors be the same kind as the High Mage Quest (attack and defend with 5), the skeletons of the type from the Necromancer quest (attack and defend with 3), and the Orcs were of the kind from the Orc Shaman quest (attack 4, defend with 3, have bows that shoot for 2). This allowed you to get multiple attacks in if you had a lot of orcs in from ranged.
If you play like this, the quest is a challenge for adults, and I will say it was my favorite one to play as Morcar/Zargon. After surviving that, they deserve the rewards and character upgrades that happen in the Elf Quest pack coming up next.